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Comment by ble | Hacker News Reader

Practically every form of debris removal is also a pretty good anti-satellite weapon.

Additionally, a not-too-unreasonable interpretation of current international treaties would lead one to conclude that piece of junk, inoperable satellite X (or a piece of debris that comes off of it) is still owned by country Y, interfering with it is a violation of Y's sovereignty, etc. This is to be contrasted with the seas where there are some kind of established norms about the wreckage of ships, abandoned ships, etc.

I kinda want to bone up on the relevant treaties and/or agreements about Earth orbit and other planets.

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> other planets

Interesting to think about, but I have a feeling that once you land on another celestial body, all property will be determined by homestead until a significant number of humans arrive later.

Imagine: there you are on Mars, building your habitat structure in a nice crater when the phone rings and NASA says, "Hey, you can't build there, since that's Russia's crater." Your response should be, "Well, when Russia gets here, they can move me off of their property."

The ability to enforce property rights is vastly reduced without a local presence representing your interests. Yes, there could be conflict over it here on Earth, but for the people actually off-world, it has no actual enforcement mechanism, especially on one-way missions. Any such treaties and agreements made now are purely for show and political gain by those parties involved.

You could depend on resources shipped from Earth which you won't get if you don't get off Russia's property, because the USA doesn't want to sour their diplomatic relations.

> it has no actual enforcement mechanism, especially on one-way missions

Could always send some weaponized rockets. They don't need to be there in person to enforce, I'd say.

(And I'm sure this violates a bunch of treaties but... eh.)

Also a very bad PR play, especially since there are no humans going to possess the property. It's just a rocket sent to blow up the trespassers.

It would be really easy to make a treaty covering the debris. The most horrible one would just require multilateral signoff on every removal action, but that would work just fine, every one is OK with clearing it out.

> every one is OK with clearing it out.

Depends. Denying US access to any tech hurts them more than the armies that don't have such high tech capabilities. On the other side - if you US are mostly unaffected by that (preparations etc) they will be so far ahead that cleaning up the debris will hurt US superiority.

So - who will be ok with cleanup in that current moment can vary a lot.

To see a lot less serious mess unfolding in real time - Syria. While the end game is clear for all - get rid of ISIS and install strong stable government, everyone is moving to get advantage and increase its bargaining pool.

Everyone with space launch capabilities would be fine with it, and they are also the relevant parties when it comes to treaty issues. I don't think Russia and China would want to leave junk up there, I don't think any one else is even questionable.

I regret to say that when it comes to international negotiations, just because everybody is "OK" with something does not mean someone won't see an opportunity to make hay out of appearing to have a problem with it. They can hold out for money, use it as an opportunity to burnish nationalist credentials at home, any number of things.

What if your junk includes proprietary or classified technology? What if your nation state at one point put something into orbit that violated a treaty?

I'm sure there are a few reasons that relevant parties might not be totally cool with rival nations pulling their debris from orbit.

Yeah, except the ones that happen to be spy satellites under radio silence.

And when you refuse to clean a piece of "debris", everyone will know it's your spy-sat, so you (and everyone else) have all the incentives to deny cleaning things at random.

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